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The Eidola Suite: Holograms at Questacon
Long before virtual reality invaded video arcades and the Internet, artists around the world were exploring the highly sophisticated process of holography to add an exciting new dimension to their work. Holography provides a unique and challenging way to reproduce living subjects, real life objects and virtually anything that can be photographed into a 3-D image.
A hologram can give viewers an idea of the size, shape, brightness and contrast of the object in the picture. Holography uses light from the subject combined with an additional beam of light shone directly onto the film or plate. Only laser light can expose both the subject and the plate to record a hologram. The laser light hits the pattern in the photographic plate, making the light that comes through the hologram exactly the same as the light that would have come off the object. To a large extent, a hologram reconstructs the light beam that the eye would receive if the original object were being lit up. What you see is the object as if it really was three-dimensional.
The theory of holography was developed by British physicist, Dennis Gabor, in 1947, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1971. The first actual production of holograms took place in the early 1960s, when the laser became available. Soon after, holography was adopted by artists around the world, including Australian artist, Paula Dawson.
Born in Brisbane in 1954, Paula Dawson became involved in holography as an undergraduate art student at the Melbourne State College in 1972-75. In fact, Dawson is one of the first Australian artists to have developed creative skills through holography. She is now internationally renowned for her work and, is one of Australia's leading holographic artists. Dawson is ranked among the world's top technology artists and has been awarded several international prizes, along with a recent Australia Council Creative Fellowship.
In many of her holograms, Paula Dawson uses familiar objects and situations, but puts them together in ways that make you look and think. A great example of this is The Eidola Suite, which is currently on display at Questacon.
The Eidola Suite is comprised of three holograms that depict an Australian home. The central hologram shows a house under construction. To one side is a furnished house and yard, complete with dressing table, birdcage, and even a car in the backyard. To the other side is a landscape ravaged by bushfire.
These three holograms that make up The Eidola Suite explore the passage of time in one slice of the Australian landscape. The block is affected by natural forces in the shape of fire. This is contrasted with the site as it will be--affected by suburban invasion and laden with Australian consumer icons. The title of the work comes from the Greek atomists who believed that objects emitted Eidola, or images, enabling us to see them.
Paula Dawson said she became involved in holography because she was interested in making images entirely from light.
'Although photos are made from light, the image is tone on a piece of paper. A hologram, however, is a recording in light, which remains in light when you see it,' Ms Dawson said.
Paula Dawson created The Eidola Suite by building the life-sized scenes inside a large metal room, before recording them. Making a hologram is a very precise art.
'The main thing to remember is to build your laboratory in a place that is quiet. Any vibration will ruin your hologram. A garage is a good spot to make a hologram--but make sure it's not on a main road.
'Most places become quiet enough to make a good hologram at night, so if you are patient you can just wait until 3.00am and usually the environment will be quiet enough to record your image,' she said.
In fact, all of the holograms for The Eidola Suite were made between 3.00am and 4.00am in a deserted cool storeroom on an orchard. The Eidola Suite holograms represent a unique mix of art and science.
Questacon has accommodated this amazing exhibition with ease, using a very powerful five-watt green laser to display the holograms. The laser must be contained in a metal room, for safety, and must rest on a thick table, to prevent vibration. Until recently the metal laser room at Questacon was occupying valuable gallery space, but a special area has now been purpose-built for the laser.
The $130 000 laser is now kept inside a metal shed that is located directly behind the holograms. The green laser splits off into three parts, to illuminate each of the three Eidola Suite holograms.
This allows viewers to take a three-dimensional tour through a typical Australian home, which has been frozen in time. As well as seeing the neighbouring holograms, which provide three-dimensional images of the house under construction, and the landscape after a bushfire has been through.
The Eidola Suite is a magnificent piece of work that leaves you pondering: Has the finished home been demolished by fire, to be re-built? Is the finished house a memory, or a future plan? Or perhaps the cycle of destruction and renewal seen in The Eidola Suite is a symbol for the cycle of life.
The Eidola Suite is currently on display at Questacon the National Science and Technology Centre in Canberra.